2018 February

Like I said last year or the year before, a lot can happen in a year.  In 2016 we began living with Linda's mom.
That didn't work out so we moved back home.  She had an accident, wrecked her car last month and stopped
driving for a while.  She felt restricted having to ask Linda to drive her everywhere so she tried driving her little
pickup truck.  She wrecked it this month -- buried so far in the woods I had to call a wrecker to pull her out
before we could get her out of the vehicle.


Linda persuaded her the best thing to do was move in with us.  She lives with us now where she's better off.
It's made our days busier, though, ensuring this dear 90-year-old lady is properly cared for because we've
also been pretty busy making some new changes to our property.  

As I mentioned last year, we converted one of our 12 x 28 storage buildings into a She Shed for Linda.  Here's
the link for that in case you missed it: ronnievincent.com\Page2\2017\2017-07_Lindas_She_Shed.  Just click
your browser's BACK button after visiting that page to return to this one.

This year, Linda wanted to remove the ramp that goes up to the door of the building.  Here's what it looked
like before making changes (see below).  The ramp was pretty steep and slick in cold or wet weather.




I tore off the old ramp.  It was pretty easy actually after I used my recip saw with a long blade to
cut through the old boards (joists) supporting the decking.  In this photo, I'm removing the ledger.



I boxed a 5 x 16 foot deck for Linda and used some short 4 x 4s I had laying around for the supports.



Next, all I had to do was cut a bunch of 5-foot long 2 x 8s for the joists.



I haven't taken a photo of the finished product yet but it turned out pretty nice.  Soon as I get a
picture of it, I'll put it here (below).

While all this was going on, we had a construction crew, the business of a friend and fellow church
member, roofing our house.  Carlos Guzman has done a lot of work for others over the years.  He's
fast, efficient, and does a great job.  We're lucky to have friends and fellow church members like
Carlos Guzman and Mike Thigpen who are so skilled.  Mike's work can be seen on my other pages.
He was unavailable for this job so I'm very glad Carlos was free.  

We didn't realize just how lucky we were to get Carlos.  His business is usually very, very busy.  But
one thing Carlos is known for around here.  When he commits to do a job, he starts right away and
stays with it until the job is done.  His guys never slow up.  Here's a photo of their work.



When they got to the chimney, I explained to Carlos the problems I've had to deal with.  The area around it
has never been properly flashed before.  We've had the framing replaced twice because of the leaks rotting
the insides away.  My son-in-law, Israel Sandoval (another skilled carpenter) re-roofed the thing.  That put
an end to the leaks at the top.  He also sealed around the base as best he could but that still didn't eliminate
the problem with the flashing.  

Since Carlos was putting on a new roof, he came up with an innovative idea.  Of course the best way to
handle rain would be to redirect the water flow.  The most thorough way to do that, as explained by one
of the carpenters who worked for Carlos, would be to build a sort of dormer or gable behind the chimney.

Since he couldn't do that without adding a lot of extra cost to the job, Carlos cris-crossed the sheet metal
behind the chimney then laid the usual sheets on top of that.  This built up the area behind the chimney
so well it was almost like building a gable behind it.  Along with new flashing, the new roof now re-directs
the water flow away from the chimney and down each side so that there should never be any more leaks.

I'm hoping I can one day get a shot of the chimney job from an arial (birds-eye) view to show what it
looks like now.  If I do, I'll post it here (below).  Until then I hope my description helps.

Along with a pretty new roof, we had Carlos build us a front porch.  We've always wanted one but we've
always had other needs competing for our home improvement projects.  Now, we finally got a porch.



Again, we've been so busy and what with the weird weather we've had lately, I don't have any current photos
showing the completed job.  But this photo below does well enough to show what it currently looks like.  We've
had a lot of compliments on it so far and neighbors have inquired about who did the job.  Carlos and company!
Great job, guys.

 

 
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